


If you say that you are mine (I'll be here 'til the end of time)

by arlathahn



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, I love Mike and Mike loves Eleven, Mike grieves in typical preteen fashion, Set between s1 and s2, also Karen Wheeler deserves a hug, this is that story, which is not very well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 11:22:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12189042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arlathahn/pseuds/arlathahn
Summary: Maybe he was so focused on Will, on the bad men, on their mission, that he never stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, when you take something—someone—from another dimension, it takes something, too.





	If you say that you are mine (I'll be here 'til the end of time)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wrenbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrenbird/gifts).



> This is an interpretation of what these kids, but namely Mike, experience post season one. There are nods to what we know of season two so far, so those of you who have watched the S2 trailer might notice a few small easter eggs here (they probably won't be canon in about a month's time, but I choose to be glad I wrote wrote them in anyway). 
> 
> What I find most interesting about Stephen King (one of the many inspirations for Stranger Things), is how he depicts children going through much more than their adult counterparts may be able to handle at such a young, impressionable age. It's a bit messed up, sure, but interesting nonetheless. The kids in Stranger Things are so bright and so incredibly resilient, I love everything about them. This fic then, in all its angst-ridden glory, was a real treat to write. 
> 
> TLDR: Who loves Mike Wheeler? Me, that's who. This baby deserves his love back, can I get an amen? 
> 
> Special thanks to Jada, for being my beta reader and cheerleader. Love you, pumpkin.

 

He's never really thought about death before.

Sure, he's had a few goldfish tossed down the toilet, he's seen a deer or a cat alongside the road. He's heard distant reports of loss: Dustin's great-aunt from Virginia, Lucas' neighbor three houses down and across the street, his own great-grandmother when he was nine. And, of course, there was that brief encounter with Will, the fake Will, but even that moment was too brief, too chaotic to devote much thought toward and besides, it ended up being a lie, anyway.

Point being, Mike Wheeler has never had his own personal tale of loss. The only person he ever feared losing was Will, but even then, he didn't have to accept that fate. Not really, or at least, not for long. Maybe that's the reason why Mike didn't see this coming, maybe that's why the reality still stings one week later. Maybe he was too focused on Will, on the bad men, on their mission, that he never stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, when you take something—someone—from another dimension it takes something, too.

It was a trade, pure and simple. Eleven's life for Will's. That's how Mike sees it, how he has to. Like a sacrificial play in one of their campaigns. Except life isn't a strategy game, and the story doesn't stop or even slow down when the fight gets heavy. It keeps moving forward, relentless and unforgiving, and it takes everything he has to be strong, to put on a brave face. For Will. For the boys.

For her.

It's just strange, because when someone goes away, there's always someone left to talk about it. Mike may not have much experience with loss, but he knows there's always a funeral, a sendoff, a goodbye. There's always relatives, or friends, or neighbors nearby to remember, to carry the story forward, to soothe the pain. That's just what you do, when someone's gone. That's just what happens. Because they're worth remembering. Because you never want to forget.

It's strange, because Mike thinks this is what loss feels like, except no one's talking. There's no body to bury, there won't be a funeral. There's no sendoff, most people don't even know she exists. Family won't come to visit, the neighbors won't gossip about the news. Mike can't bring himself to believe she's gone forever, but that doesn't change the fact that she's not here right now.

It doesn't change the fact that it hurts.

So, at the next campaign meeting, Mike braces himself to ask the boys if they can have their own private funeral, though he hates calling it that, even in his own mind. It sounds so final. So absolute. Nothing about this world or the next is certain anymore, but he also doesn't know what else to do. Eleven is gone, possibly forever, and it's—it's just what you do. It doesn't feel right, to just  _move on,_ as though she didn't touch their lives in profound, life-altering ways. He may not have joined her there physically, but she turned his life upside-down regardless, and he can't, he  _won't_  let that memory fade.

It doesn't matter though, because when he gets to the word,  _that_  word, he can't complete the sentence, can't make his voice move past the lump in his throat. It's downright embarrassing, how emotional he is about a person who disappeared in a supernatural poof of smoke, but Mike is completely out of his depth here and he's twelve years old and there are times he just doesn't know what to  _do_.

He must be more transparent than he intends, or at least some measure of what he means to say must appear on his face because Lucas claps him on the shoulder and says “yes.”

One simple word but somehow, it's all the validation Mike didn't know he needed.

 

* * *

 

They don't tell their parents where they're going.

Mike's not sure how much the other boys did or didn’t say, and in truth he has no clue how much his own mom knows, but it doesn't matter because it's not enough. Mike knows she has questions, can see it in the tentative glances she sends his way, but he also sees her stop before she starts, sees her not pushing and for that, Mike is beyond grateful.

He's not even sure whether they agreed to meet in this exact spot, or if they each just knew this is where they were going to end up. All he knows is they appear like clockwork at 3:15pm in front of Castle Byers, they drive a wooden cross into the ground, they fill a kid pool with water, and they wait.

“Maybe we should get some salt,” Dustin jokes, but the humor falls flat. Silence surrounds the four boys as they stare at the shimmering water and Mike knows they're all waiting on the precipice, hoping for a miracle.

Nothing happens.

No one says anything until Lucas breaks the quiet, offering a few so-called last words like it is a real funeral, like the cross and the kiddy pool is a grave. The sentiment is genuine, though, and Mike finds himself brushing away a teardrop by the time Lucas sums up his speech with an eloquent, “You still might be a weirdo, Eleven, but Mike was right. You're our weirdo. We'll...we'll miss you.”

More silence.

“Come on, Lucas, how am I supposed to follow  _that_?” Dustin whines, receiving a stomach-full of Lucas-elbow for his trouble, and it's almost enough to alleviate the gloom. Almost.

Mike doesn't want to go next, doesn't know if he wants to speak at all, despite the fact that he's the one who asked for this memorial. But he's taking a step forward and kneeling at the pool before he's even recognized the motion, his mouth already moving before his brain starts firing.

“I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promise,” he says and tears burn the corners of his eyes at the first damn sentence.

Mike can feel the full-body sob building inside like a bomb ready to blow, but this time he can't bring himself to leave the scene of the crime. This time he doesn't care that he cries like a baby in front of his friends. This time he welcomes Dustin's presence at his back, enveloping him in warmth. This time he listens to Will's voice in his ear, telling him he's sorry. This time Lucas doesn't say a word, just puts his hand on top of Mike's and  _shit_ , he has a few tears, too.

It's the saddest funeral Mike has ever been to, even Will's, and no one knows.

No one knows.

 

* * *

 

Mike Wheeler never really thought about death before, but now that he's been shown another world, now that he's seen superpowers in the flesh, now that she came and now that she left, now he investigates every possible reality in-between.

Now he searches and he hopes and he dreams.

 

* * *

 

In the end, it's Will who finds him.

Mike has been trying not to bring her up, but he's self-aware enough to know he hasn't been succeeding, or at least not very well. It's true he hasn't said her name since  _that_  day, none of them have, but the silences drag out longer than they used to. He's feigned illness to get out of the last two campaigns, and they all know the truth. It feels wrong, lying about something so simple, but it's also not simple at all. Friends don't lie, but he just doesn't know how to tell the truth. He doesn’t know how to tell his friends that it feels like a part of him is missing, but not the same part that was frantic and determined to find Will. This feels ethereal, like he can still feel her presence, sometimes, like all he needs to do is reach out and he could see her again. Except he doesn't know how to do that either, doesn't know how to do much of anything lately, and he's never felt so useless, so paralyzed in a chasm between worlds.

It seems fitting, somehow, that it's Will who stops by the following Tuesday. Will Byers, the boy who saw that very literal chasm and survived. Will Byers, who is Mike’s living, breathing proof that maybe there’s hope left to cling to.

It's one of the reasons Mike doesn't bother putting on a brave face.

“Hi,” Will says as he steps through the doorway, and just that, just Will Byers saying hi and offering that trademark smile is enough to ease Mike's hurt, just a little.

“Hi,” Mike tries to keep his voice neutral, but he isn't entirely sure he succeeds at that, either. His mother gives him a look as she closes the front door, but he pretends he doesn't see it. Mike knows the more days that pass, the more his behavior becomes suspect, and missing two campaigns on top of it all is unheard of for him. He hasn't even bothered coming up with valid excuses, which goes to show how lost he is, how unmotivated to revert back to their old ways of passing the time. Sometimes he wishes he could pin it all on growing up, but he's self-aware enough to know it has less to do with his own maturity and more to do with one badass supernatural girl who vanished before his eyes a week before.

It's only once Will shucks off his coat and Mike's mom wanders down the hall to hang it up that Mike notices Will has brought gifts, presumably. A walkman in one hand and cookies in the other.

“Jonathan helped me make these,” Will says, though he almost looks shy to admit it. Mike raises an eyebrow in question, unsure of the occasion, but Will just shrugs and casts his eyes down to his hands.

“I know it's been hard. Lately, I mean,” Will continues, and Mike doesn't miss the way his mom's head snaps up at the slightest suggestion of hurt. Will doesn't elaborate, but when his head lifts, it's as though he sees Mike's every wish, every dream, every regret plain as day.

Will has always been too perceptive for his own good, but he knows how to play his cards right. He knows how to keep quiet, and knows when to speak. Mike looks at him and lets out a sigh he didn't know he was holding, the decision to open up the piece of himself he's been hiding as simple as breathing.

“You wanna go downstairs?”

 

* * *

 

It's awkward, at first.

Mike is used to being the talker, at least when it comes to Will. It's not often the two of them are alone together, really alone, and in the rare occasions they are, Mike is more of a conversationalist. Not too much, he thinks, but enough. But when it comes to discussing the Upside Down, or the grave erected in Will's backyard, or Mike's personal stake in the mystery of yet another missing person, Mike has no clue where to start.

“My, uh, my brother let me bring this too,” Will motions to the walkman. Mike watches Will's forefinger brush the blue casing, opting for silence. He's not helping alleviate the tension, he knows he's not, but he's also not sure where that opener was heading, and he doesn't want to presume because the truth is Mike doesn't know a whole lot of anything right now.

“He used to play cassettes for me, when mom and dad were fighting. Before dad left.”

Mike looks up at that, sees Will looking back at him, too. He looks braver now, more sure of his words. His eyes have a spark Mike hasn't seen for a long time, since before the upside down. It seems odd, that his gaze would hold such electricity now, when referencing such a sad time in his family's history, but maybe it has less to do with his family and more to do with the tentative subjects everyone had been skirting around this past week. They both know how fragile this reality is, how everyone is afraid to upset the balance. Afraid to be brave and test the limits, lest they lose what they'd just gained. It seems fitting, somehow, that Will Byers be the one to turn that fear on its head.

He’s always been the brave one, whether he knows it or not.

“I'm sure you have a lot of questions,” Will says. “More than anyone else. I wish I could answer them all for you.”

There's a pause. Will keeps fidgeting with the walkman, scraping at the faded blue plastic.

“I haven't—I haven't felt her.”

Mike feels his eyes grow wider at that.

“What?”

Will keeps his head down, the timidity from earlier returning tenfold. “Since I've been there I have...I sense things differently, sometimes. And I haven't felt her. I don't know if I could, exactly,” he carries on in a rush, “but I haven't noticed anything.”

Mike isn't speechless very often, but he finds himself at a loss for words. He never would have guessed that Will would retain any sort of...connection to the upside down, and the thought concerns him more than he wants to admit, to himself or to Will. He also knows that connection is not Will's overall point here, and he should be grateful Will mentioned it at all. But both points make him feel like he just went from zero to one hundred in five seconds, and he doesn't know how to keep up.

“Thank you,” Mike says, not sure which point he's referring to in his own head and immediately berates himself for it.

Will must be able to tell though, of course he can, because he just smiles a small smile like he knows, and it's okay. Like he wasn't expecting Mike to be able to reply, like it's still not the overall point.

“Everyone is so focused on me being back, but you lost someone. We all did, but you the most. So I thought...what helped me might help you.”

Will holds out the headphones. Mike accepts them wordlessly, still not connecting the dots.

“This may not help everything feel better, but maybe it can give you a new memory.” Mike opens his mouth to question where this is coming from, how Will just  _knows,_ but something in his friend's expression stops the words in his throat. Where Mike is the picture of doubt, Will is peaceful. His features are calm, his eyes kind. But it's more than just sincerity, it’s almost...all-knowing. All-seeing. Mystical and other-worldly.

“Maybe you can have one good memory in all this, even if it's surrounded by something bad.”

Will smiles, that small little trademark grin, and stands up. He climbs the stairs, he opens the door, and he doesn't look back. No prompting, no goodbye. Mike hears him grab his coat from the hall closet, hears his own mother's voice, indistinct, concerned. But Will is calm, always calm, as he collects himself in hushed tones and leaves.

For a moment, surrounded by silence, Mike feels completely alone. In a place made alive by happy memories, Mike is the one stagnant, lurking in the shadows and out of place. He doesn't belong here, he thinks. Not here, maybe not anywhere.

But he also hates feeling useless, so it doesn't take long to make up his mind. He's never gotten into music, not to the same extent as Will, but Mike trusts his judgment. Trusts the look in his eye, trust his friend's perception. He's willing to give it a shot. What more could it hurt, anyway?

Mike pushes play and The Clash filters through the headphones, loud and unforgiving. The tempo isn't what Mike would consider a metaphor for his life at the moment, but it doesn't matter because Will was right. By the time the second verse reaches his ears, Mike has tears streaming down his face and hands shoved up under his eyes. Not because he just discovered a new favorite band, or because the words are that poetic, but because for the first time in over a week, it drowns out everything else. It quiets that vacant space where she could have, where she would have, been.

Mike has never put it into words, but part of him knew this day would come. Since the funeral maybe, he knew this moment was looming overhead, following him wherever he went. But now that he's here, allowing himself to acknowledge its presence, it's different than his expectations. It feels a little like destiny, a little like déjà vu—the surreal, infinite moment when everything makes perfect sense and no sense at all. It's as though he'd been led here, to this exact spot in this exact moment in time, to stand on the threshold and listen. The crescendo dances and swells in his ear and as it reaches its peak, it asks him a question.

_Should I stay, or should I go?_

Mike thinks of Will's confession, wonders if his friend senses things differently all the time. They all do, Mike thinks, but Will the most and they don't talk about that, either. Maybe Mike has more in common with his friends than he thought, maybe his mother would understand more than he gives her credit for. Maybe he should take a chance, maybe he should be brave and carry on.

Mike hasn't wanted to acknowledge it, but part of him knows he can't keep going on like this, or at least knows he has to find some semblance of balance in-between. He has to pick a side on the chasm, or he'll end up like Joyce Byers except he'll actually go insane. Because Eleven hasn't spoken to him through the lights, and a monster hasn't climbed out of the wall. There hasn't been any indication, any at all, that she's still alive, and all logic is telling him he should let go. It's why they had the funeral, wasn't it? Because that's what you do, to get closure. That's what normal people do. Go to a funeral, listen to music, and cry.

So the following week Mike goes to the campaign meeting. He plasters on a smile until it feels somewhat genuine, he mediates between his friends, he bickers when necessary. The day after that he visits Mr. Clarke's sound room and fixes the radio transmitter since it's sort of technically his fault it broke anyway. He talks to his mother for the first time in weeks, and not just about the mashed potatoes at the dinner table. He makes small talk about anything and everything except what happened in the fall of 1983, and it almost feels nice. It almost feels real. He stays active, he keeps pedaling faster and faster, trying his damnedest to live in this world, since it's the only one he's got. Mike isn't sure he has a choice in the matter, but he does have a decision.

_Should I stay or should I go?_

Mike doesn't know if he's speaking to himself or the other-worldly force he pretends doesn't exist but he secretly hopes is listening. Either way, he answers.

 _Stay_.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Mike wonders what his life would have been, if he hadn't met El. Sometimes he wonders how perfectly dull life would have passed him by. Sometimes he debates which is better: not living life to the fullest, or achieving that fulfillment only to have it slip through your fingers. Only to live past the heartbreak back to some semblance of normalcy.

And he gets it. He gets that he's twelve, what does he know about hypothetical futures, what does he know about complex emotions, what does he know about love.

But he did know, he thinks.

He does.

 

* * *

 

“You lied to me.”

Mike's head snaps up to find Nancy standing at his bedroom door, arms crossed and face stern. He can't even process the words right away, too preoccupied by her unexpected presence in his doorway. This must be some sort of emergency, he thinks, Nancy never comes in his room willingly.

“Um—” Mike doesn't know where to start, but it doesn't matter because Nancy is pushing the door wider, stepping through the threshold and making a beeline for his bed like she didn't just break every sibling code in existence.

Mike is so stunned he doesn't even protest.

“Look,” Nancy tucks a brown curl behind her ear as she sits beside him, their shoulders brushing. “We made a deal. No more lies.”

She levels him with  _that_  stare. The Nancy Wheeler stare, the older sibling stare. The stare Mike hates that says  _I dare you to question my validity; I'm sixteen years old and a foot taller than you_.

Mike questions her anyway. Every time.

“Look,” Mike parrots, “I don't know what you're talking about, and what are you  _doing_  in here? You hate it here and there's a sign on the door that clearly says—“

Nancy just rolls her eyes. “I'm talking about Eleven.”

Everything just...stops.

His mouth closes, his ears ring, his eyes stare straight ahead until moisture collects and burns the edges of his vision. He's so zoned out he can see the precise moment his sister's expression morphs from exasperation to concern.

“Mike? Mike!”

He blinks. Clears his throat.

“Yeah?”

Something in Nancy seems to deflate the same time Mike’s chest does, her face changing into something soft and soothing. It’s just as foreign as her sudden appearance in his bedroom, and Mike isn't sure he likes it, though it’s not her reaction so much as what's behind it. He may only be twelve, but Mike knows a serious conversation when he sees one and this is hitting a little too close to home, even after everything they've been through together.

Nancy sighs. Her left hand twitches and for a moment, Mike thinks she's going to take his hand. Her lips purse in a way that means she's thinking deeply about something, but her hand doesn't move and no words come, not right away.

Her slow exhale is too loud in the silence.

“You cared about her.”

Mike wants to deny it, like he did before. He doesn't want to admit it, to anyone really, but mostly he doesn’t want to read the pity he knows he'll find in Nancy's brown eyes if he looks up. It's too similar to their mother's and he can't take any more guilt if he sees those too-large eyes swell with sympathy.

“I don't want your pity,” he says instead, obstinate to the last.

It's not a confession, but it is an admission of sorts. A side-step, so he doesn’t have to say the words that really matter. Mike expects Nancy to admonish him for being so callous, but instead she surprises him like she’s been doing nonstop for the past week.

“That’s not—” Nancy starts, then stops. “I’m just saying, if you want to, you know,  _talk,_ then I’m here for you.”

There’s a beat of awkward silence that feels almost authentically normal despite the fact that this attempt at a sibling bonding session isn’t normal at all.

“You sound like mom,” Mike retorts, with just a touch of sardonic humor.

Nancy levels him with another look, before her eyes widen in horror. “Oh my god, you’re  _right_.”

Mike laughs. Nancy looks offended for a few seconds before she smiles back and takes a swing at his arm. Mike dodges with practiced ease and from there it’s all-out war: Nancy tickles under his arms and around his sides, Mike pinches and tugs and  _pulls_  every piece of brunette hair he can find. When that doesn’t work, he digs his blunt fingernails into her arm the way he knows she hates. Nancy yelps with pain, slapping him upside the head but she’s still grinning widely, Mike can see it from his octopus-like view beneath her elbow.

They pause, gasping for breath, staring at each other in a tense stalemate and something about the moment, warm and childish and distinctly them, makes Mike remember how much he's missed his older sister. She used to be so preoccupied, with her grades and her not-so-secret crush that she seemed better than them—better than  _him_ —but visiting another dimension has changed Nancy into someone he recognizes, maybe even respects.

“I invited her to the Snow Ball,” Mike blurts.

Nancy freezes from her perch above him.

“Oh Mike,” she says, and it sounds like her voice is shaking.

“Shut up.” He’s defensive and vulnerable, feeling like a colossal idiot. He doesn't know why he picked now to speak, but he did and now it’s floating, real and unearthed, in front of them. Mike tries to pull back, but Nancy stops him with a hand on his arm.

“Mike,” she says, and when he chances a tentative look up her way, her eyes are glistening. “I’m so sorry.”

Mike has never really relied on his big sister for anything before, except that one time when he was eight and wanted to learn which new swear word Dustin heard but only knew the first letter. Nancy relented then, and she relents now, allowing her little brother’s head on her lap, allowing his tears on her favorite blue jeans. Mike still doesn’t know how to talk about Eleven, not casually anyway, but maybe talking like adults is overrated. Maybe Nancy was right all along, maybe the time for lies is over. Maybe the truth isn’t so complicated after all.

“She was—I—” he tries, but the words get clogged in his throat.

Nancy’s hand curls around his arm, drawing him closer and closer still until both arms are wrapped around him, a simple comfort Mike didn’t know he needed.

“I feel like I can still see her, sometimes,” he whispers between a hiccup and a sob.

He expects questions, expects jokes, expects to be told what a big sissy he is, but Nancy just holds him and strokes his hair. Her hand brushes back and forth along his back, and when she speaks it’s not to mock, but to comfort.

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

“Nancy,” he calls to her some odd hours later when she stands to leave. She turns back around to face him, cheeks red and eyes swollen.

“Yes?” Her voice is so small, so unlike the confident older sister he used to know and Mike misses that, too.

“You lied, too.”

Nancy’s mouth opens like she’s going to deny it, then thinks better of it and nods instead, an acknowledgement, closing the door on her way out with a quiet  _click_. Mike sits in silence, listens to the clock down the hall tick, then tock, the sound reverberating through the too-empty house and straight into his palms. He isn't really sure what was just ventured, or if anything was gained, but it feels like a pact between siblings.

It feels like a different sort of promise.

 

* * *

 

Deep down, Mike knows the boy who went into the middle school that fateful day is not the same boy who came out.

Maybe that's why he stops playing Dungeon Master at the campaigns, maybe that's why he distances himself despite all his previous attempts at keeping busy and moving forward. Mike can feel himself becoming a shell of his former self, the once all important dreams of heroes and villains seeming lackluster in the face of the real thing.

Mike wishes he could be more like the heroes he reads about in the comics under his bed, the ones he used to write for his friends in their glory days. He wishes he had a fraction of that same bravado, that same instinct when it comes to knowing, just  _knowing_ what the right course of action should be.

But he doesn't know and he can't fake it any longer, so as the days grow colder, Mike does too.

 

* * *

 

The Snow Ball comes, and his heart goes with it.

Jennifer Hayes asks Will to be her date, a surprise move that leaves both Lucas and Dustin beyond delighted. Her friend, a meek blonde thing two inches taller, asks Mike.

He declines, but still attends the party because all his friends expect him to and because it’s the sort of thing that should, in theory, make him happy. His mother is thrilled, his father bemused, but for Mike it’s nothing short of disheartening and he can’t tell any of them  _why_.

He goes and everything is fine, almost picture perfect: there’s a disco ball on the ceiling and party paper lining the floor; there’s cherry punch and there’s pop music and there’s an overabundance of glitter; there’s a girl and a boy swaying forward and back in slow motion, awkward but happy. A girl with cute blonde hair and a twinkle in her eye who approaches Mike later, sneaking up near his elbow and whispering, “Have you kissed anyone before?”

By all accounts it should make his heart flutter and his breath hitch but it doesn’t and it’s not  _right_.

It’s not right.

Mike leaves after that, escapes to the bathroom and stares himself in the mirror. Will is there, doing the exact same thing, and Mike doesn’t hesitate before he lunges forward and  _clings_.

They hold each other, two broken boys feigning normalcy in an un-normal world and Mike wishes, not for the first time, that this were enough.

 

* * *

 

It’s Christmas.

There's snow on the ground and icicles on the gutters, there's angels and igloos in the Wheeler back yard. There's gingersnap cookies and holiday specials, there's joy and there's happiness in every corner, and Mike is happy. He's happy.

He gets a new walkie talkie set for Christmas, one he'd been stalking at the local Radio Shack for the better part of six months, before. It has all the latest technology including long distance reception, so long it might even reach Dustin's house without a hitch. His mother beams when he opens it, a too-kind "isn't that great?" on her lips. Mike knows she trying, trying to connect, trying to help, so he feigns a bright smile, says "really great" and kisses her cheek.

He spends the better part of the evening setting up the new equipment with the boys, adjusting channels and testing frequencies. They go their separate ways with a promise to test the signal's duration the following day, but Mike doesn't follow them upstairs to show them out like he usually does. His mother finds him sitting downstairs hours later, hovering in silence and alone near a lopsided blanket fort, old walkie talkie in hand.

"Michael, do you think it's time we take that fort down? It’s been there for ages." She phrases it like a question, but Mike knows it's more of a suggestion. Not quite a chore, but getting there.

"Maybe just a little while longer?" Mike asks, trying to keep his voice level.

He can feel his mother’s stare burning into his back, her eyes narrowing and her mouth turning the way it does when she thinks. Finally she sighs, rubbing a hand on his shoulder. "Okay sweetie,” she says, and walks back upstairs.

“Just a little while longer."

 

* * *

 

Her voice haunts his dreams.

She was a girl of few words, maybe that's why her voice lingers in his mind. She chose her words carefully, sparingly, so that must be it. That must be why she calls to him here, in her own private shelter, tantalizingly close yet just beyond reach. In a place between waking and sleeping, her whisper circles like a cool winter breeze, so enveloping it feels more a gentle caress than a ghost's call.

 _Mike_.

“Eleven?” he asks, and silence answers.

It should feel safe. It should be a comfort, to hear her again. Except there's something in her tone, something stilted and otherworldly that fills Mike with dread. He pictures her alone and afraid in a place of death and decay, a place Will visited for a simple week, a place she's been stuck in for months _._ She's so  _close_ , he knows she is, but there’s no proof. There's no voice on the radio, there's not one flicker in the lights. There’s nothing but garbled static and the thump of his pulse pounding in his ears.

He’s angry and upset, alone and so very lonely, so Mike does something he hasn’t considered in a decade, since he was just a toddler and afraid of a very different kind of monster, the imaginary kind, the kind that lived in closets and under beds.

He goes to Nancy’s room.

Her bed is soft, her blankets warm. Mike tries not to jostle her as he slips beneath the covers, but Nancy wakes up anyway with a soft groan and a hand on his arm, pushing him away in surprise before reality kicks in and she welcomes him with open arms.

He's never been more grateful for his sister's lack of questions.

As he lays there, awake and hyperaware of every nerve in his body, Mike wishes for sleep to come, for the dreams to return again but to be real this time, to take him away instead. He wishes for a great many things, most of which start and end with one word, her name. It seems appropriate that any remaining hope be tethered to a single word. She would like that, he thinks.

After all, she was a girl of few words.

She was.

This will take some getting used to.

 

* * *

 

Months pass.

Winter becomes spring, campaigns become arcades. Twelve becomes thirteen, the past becomes history. Nothing really changes, but for Mike, that means everything does.

That is until Will collapses one innocuous Tuesday afternoon.

He zones out first, pupils unresponsive but awake. It lasts for minutes but it feels like hours, his body frozen in a perfect vertical line. When he does come to, it's only for a fraction of a second, little more than a blink before he's falling into Joyce's arms. Will collapses in his own back yard, right next to that damn cross they erected as a grave and it's foreboding and awful, it's terrifying and ugly, but mostly it just hurts _._

The part of Mike that's been hoping against all odds comes to head with the other part of him that's been dreading the moment that same hope is realized. The moment life proves once and for all that Mike's dreams may very well come true, but the reality will always,  _always_  come at a price. It's nothing short of torment, watching the horror that's been aching his heart catch up to him at long last, for Mike to realize with stark precision that he wasn't far off, back in the fall of 1983 when he surmised that it was a trade, Eleven's life for Will's. He's not sure how he knows, not sure if he could explain it if he tried, but staring at the boy who came back to life, somehow it all becomes abundantly clear: it was always going to come back to this. It was always going to come back to Will, to the Upside Down, to balances and fleas and acrobats.

To her.

Mike looks at his friend and part of him wishes, just this once, that his gut wasn't right.

That night, under the cover of the stars, Mike rushes home, heads straight for the basement and makes a beeline for the fort still propped by the back door. The sheets have changed, the batteries replaced, but the home in his basement is still very much the home he remembers. It's a little worn now, a little outdated, but it's still standing. It's still real and unwaveringand that, Mike thinks, is the important part.

He looks over every dial, every blanket, every nook and every cranny. He looks because he needs to know how to save Will, but he also needs to know how to save  _her_ , if there's still a her worth saving.

Mike searches and searches and when he comes up short, he sits at the threshold of a home he used to know and prays, one last time, for a miracle.

And this time, he asks for a sign.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.
> 
> Feel free to drop me a line [here](http://tatooinelukes.tumblr.com/). I love making friends and hyperfixating on fandoms together. It's kind of my thing.


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